Modern day hospital operating room floors are cluttered with many kinds of hoses and electrical cords for such equipment as electrocardiographs, pulse oximeters, CO.sub.2 monitors, and other diagnostic equipment.
Heavy anesthesia machines, usually mounted on a large cart containing devices for delivering and monitoring the administration of anesthetic to a patient, are difficult to move about through the clutter of cords and tubing. In rare instances, cart wheels may catch on tubing, accidentally disconnecting patients from breathing systems. In other instances, people have been injured when the wheels of anesthesia carts were jammed or even snapped off by the clutter of cords, causing the anesthesia machines to fall on patients and doctors.
These same difficulties can arise with caster wheeled equipment in other environments, such as mobile computer tables, mobile test equipment such as in electrical engineering environments, and for mobile industrial equipment.
One solution to this problem appears in U.S. Pat. No. 5,170,528 to Navar et al. The Navar device is a complicated arrangement, having many parts, in which a wheel is embraced within a system of rollers surrounded by an obstacle-clearing shield. One problem with the Navar device arises from the fact that it is not easily disassembled. Whenever there is a need to install or remove the device from a cart wheel, either numerous locking pins and interlocks must be installed or removed, or the heavy anesthesia cart must be lifted onto or off of the device, thereby creating a possibility for an accident to occur. Another problem posed by the Navar device arises from the system of rollers, which may pick up dirt, hair, or other debris. Debris in the rollers creates the potential for jamming the rollers, thereby transforming the obstacle-clearing device of Navar into the very obstacle that the device was meant to clear.
An additional obstacle clearing device which has been utilized consists of a simple cylindrical tubular shield which is cut from a length of plastic pipe. However, because of the solid, non-jointed nature of this shield, the entire anesthesia cart must be lifted to place or remove the shield around a wheel. Installation and removal thus presents risk of back injury or tipping of the machine.